Dear family and friends,
We continue to enjoy the notes and pictures many of you have sent this holiday season. The years seem to go by so quickly!
Mark, Cindy, and ParentsMark worked through June at La Costa Canyon High School where he taught AP Calculus, Geometry and Statistics classes. With California’s school budget situation, LCC did not retain any temporary teachers and reassigned many tenured. Fortunately, he had also been doing IT consulting for a start-up firm which he continues to do. He is finishing up a long-term sub assignment at Francis Parker HS which he has loved. How can you not when you have 8-20 students in your class?! He would love to continue there so we’ll see what happens. He remains active with Rancho Bernardo HS as a Foundation member and continues to maintain the football team’s website and is on the chain-gang for home games. He finally gave up his beloved 12 year old Mercedes and has a 2010 Prius which the kids think is very “space age”!
Cindy continues to work at the elementary school a few hours a week, coordinates a martial arts enrichment program for eight elementary schools, handles the admin and website for a local lacrosse organization, helps a friend with his colonial education website, and tries to keep the family’s blog up-to-date. She recently joined a group of professionals who promote mixed martial arts events around the world as Secretary for the corporation. The first event in August was a success and 2011 should be an exciting year as the company promotes events around the world. As time permits, she still enjoys crafts. Mark surprised her over the summer with her beloved Escalade as he was tired of hearing her whine about missing the one she had to surrender to a lease. We figure between the two cars we average decent miles-per-gallon as a family!
Mark’s mom was 91 in July and doing very well. She is healthy, takes care of herself, enjoys her computer and email, loves her Kindle, and looks forward to the dogs’ visits for treats! Cindy's parents are enjoying life in Ft. Myers although we were sad to learn that Dad has bladder cancer and is currently halfway through his treatments.
The Kids – both human and furryWow…where do we begin? Ryan’s choices did not improve as we began 2010 resulting in an administrative transfer to a different high school for doing drugs during finals. He chose to not attend classes, failed many courses, and refused to allow the Intensive Outpatient Drug Program he was in for 18 weeks help him. When things began to impact his siblings and our family’s quality of life, not to mention the devastating path he was on, we had to take drastic actions. On June 16th he entered an 18-month residential drug rehab program in the Torrance area. It is a unique program and one we knew would change him if he was willing to accept the help. While sobriety is the main focus, it is a peer pressure based program where they are held accountable by their peers for ALL their actions, they learn how to function in real life by having daily chores, doing their own laundry and ironing, being responsible for meals, how to budget their weekly allowance, coordinate rides to AA meetings, and attend independent study if they are still in school. Families were allowed to visit each Saturday and attend a “family meeting” where the week is reviewed and then the guys can go to coffee, etc. for a couple hours. Each Saturday we visited and quickly saw steady improvement. Mid November the Director talked to us and felt that, due to his age and fact he was very homesick, Ryan needed to come home. It was a little overwhelming but we put in place what would be needed for him to be successful at home – counseling, AA meetings, independent study, part-time job search, etc. On November 21st he was given the conditions of coming home versus staying and he chose to return home. We have welcomed home a young man who is nothing like the one we took in June. Our home remains peaceful, he is 40 pounds thinner, smiles often, appreciates his family, continues working his AA program and soon will have six months sober, continues with independent study, dresses nice, is responsible, role model to his siblings, and has been aggressively job hunting. He knows should he choose to regress that he will return to the program but we are hoping that things will only continue to get better and better.
Connor is in the 8th grade and excited to be in his last year at middle school. His grades continue to be good and he won 2nd place in an Art contest at the Del Mar Fair this summer for a mask he molded and painted. He continues playing on RB’s lacrosse leagues and his passion for football hasn’t ebbed. He can’t wait to put on football gear next year as a Freshman player! He still loves animals and creatures and is lobbying for a bearded dragon lizard. His infectious laugh continues although there are days we would like to put a muzzle on him!
Kelleigh is in the 7th grade and made the Honor Roll this past term which earned her a cell phone. Math continues to be her favorite subject and her love of reading has turned into an obsession. She reads at least one book a day and over 75 this past Summer. She thinks she wants to be an editor so she can read for a living! She still plays the piano but her fabulous teacher moved which made us very sad as she was excelling rapidly with her. In September she broke her wrist running around the pool and had three casts over the course of 8 weeks. And…did we mention she has very definite ideas about what is fashionable?!
In February Shadow began to lose control of his back legs and, after tremendous efforts by the vet, we made the necessary but very sad decision to let him go to doggy heaven. Buddy was very lonely without his brother so in late March Jake joined our family. Jake is a 2 year old lab mix who was taken back from a couple by the Lab Rescue after being left in a crate for 14+ hours a day, abused at some level by a big guy, etc. He is still leery around men but he and Buddy bonded immediately and are inseparable. Buddy was 3 in March, tops 100 pounds, and thinks he is a lap dog! They have their daily routine of games, naps, snacks from Grandma, bones to chew, and no shortage of attention!
We wish all the best to your family in the coming year and hope that you will keep in touch as we enjoy hearing from all of you.
Mark, Cindy, Ryan, Connor, & Kelleigh
Buddy & Jake
We found the boys testing out this cool jeep ...
The custom aquarium we had made for Newton arrived and I spent Wednesday afternoon setting it up. He seems to like all the additional space. Mark has to make a cover for it since he's been known to escape! 
My sister came to San Diego on business and spent the weekend with us and is able to come back and spend this evening with us as well. We did a little girls' only shopping despite the massive crowds and, most importantly, got her See's candy! I made her favorite dinner followed by fireside pies in honor of one of our favorite childhood memories. Weather has been absolutely perfect which I think is the first time ever when I've had company come!
On Friday night we were excited to meet long-time family friends of Mark and Blanche's, Lloyd and Mary Lou Gillespie. Mark hasn't seen Mary Lou in over 40 years but the visit seemed as if we'd known them forever. Chuck and Mary Lou's dad went to school together so they go back a long way! Was a very fun evening and we look forward to visiting their "ranch" when we're in northern California.
